Nobody Expected A Cricket Warm-Up Match To Sell Canberra Like This
If you’d told me that one of the most evocative travel ads for Australia this week would sneak into the sports pages under the words “Ashes tour game in Canberra,” I’d have laughed. Yet here we are. As England’s cricket team sticks to its decision to play their warm-up match in Australia’s quiet capital before the Ashes, the headlines are all tactics and selections. Hidden beneath that, though, is a different kind of story: of a city that most visitors skip… and how a simple tour match can turn into an unexpected love letter to place.
Former England captain Alec Stewart has been backing the team’s choice to “stick to their guns” over the Canberra game. While pundits argue about match fitness and preparation, I kept seeing something else: little glimpses of dawn light over Manuka Oval, players jogging around Lake Burley Griffin, and England fans posting photos from a city many of them admitted they’d never have visited if not for cricket. So let’s follow their trail. Here are five Canberra moments—some drawn from this very Ashes warm-up week, some from well-trodden local rituals—that explain why a “nothing” tour game might quietly be one of 2025’s most unexpectedly inspiring travel stories.
Watching England Train Under A Canberra Sunrise
The first thing you notice if you arrive early at Manuka Oval, as England did before their tour game, isn’t the stadium. It’s the sky. In the days leading up to the match, local photographers and traveling fans have been posting soft-pink sunrise shots on social media, the neat white stands of Manuka sitting under a sky that looks like it’s blushing. While the English press debates workloads and batting orders, the traveling supporters in the cheap seats are having a completely different conversation: which café to hit after training, and where that soft eucalyptus smell in the air is coming from.
One fan’s thread has been making the rounds on X (Twitter): he flew out from London assuming “Canberra would be like a large office park,” only to stand outside the Oval at 6 a.m., coffee in hand, listening to galahs scream in the trees as the England squad went through fielding drills. His photos show players running laps around a ground bordered not by skyscrapers but by suburban streets and tall gums. That’s the quiet magic here: if you follow sport to Canberra, you don’t just watch a team prepare—you share the city’s morning rhythm. When the cameras switch off and the pundits file their pre-match Q&As, the sun is barely above the trees, and you suddenly realize you’ve been gifted a whole day in a place you never meant to explore.
The Lake Loop That Turns Fans Into Locals
Scroll through posts tagged around the Ashes warm-up this week and you start to see the same curve of water again and again: Lake Burley Griffin. England supporters in bucket hats, Australian fans in green and gold, all doing the same thing between sessions—walking, jogging, or renting bikes and drifting along the lake’s smooth path. A couple from Leeds wrote that they had come “for Bazball, not for a lakeside wellness retreat,” yet somewhere between jet lag and curiosity they ended up cycling the full loop, stopping every few minutes to photograph black swans and the low, clean lines of Canberra’s museums on the opposite shore.
Lake Burley Griffin has that strange power cities only get when they’re built with space to breathe. On one side, you see the angular silhouette of Parliament House; on another, the Australian War Memorial sits framed by a long, straight avenue. During Ashes week, those big institutions become landmarks you actually walk to rather than abstract names in a civics textbook. One English fan joked online that their step count in Canberra was “higher than Jonny Bairstow’s batting average,” but the subtext was clear: they were falling for the place, one footstep at a time. The path along the lake blurs the line between traveler and temporary resident—you end up doing exactly what locals do on a Tuesday evening, just with an England shirt instead of a gym tee.
When A Warm-Up Match Becomes A Street-Food Map
On paper, this tour game is just a tune-up: England against a local opposition, some overs in the legs, a chance to test combinations before the intensity of the Ashes. On the ground in Canberra, it’s been something else: an excuse for a miniature cultural exchange, played out in food queues more than on the pitch. As journalists chase quotes about “sticking to their guns,” fans are sharing something much more practical: where to eat between overs.
From the moment tickets went on sale, Canberra’s hospitality scene quietly prepared. Cafés around Manuka Oval extended hours, food trucks positioned themselves along likely walking routes, and in the city centre, restaurants leaned into cricket-watchers’ timings—early lunches and late dinners to bookend the day’s play. On Instagram, one England fan posted a stitched “scorecard” not of runs and wickets, but of dishes: smashed avo and flat white at a Manuka café before the start, banh mi from a market stall at lunch, craft beer and tacos after stumps.
If you’re traveling for the Ashes warm-up, this is your unofficial rule: treat every break in play as a challenge to try somewhere new. Saving money? Follow the local fans—they peel off in small streams to their favorite spots, and you can literally track popularity by the size of the queue. Want something uniquely Canberran? Look for menus flaunting local produce: Brindabella beef, Canberra-region wines, or treats made with native ingredients like wattleseed and lemon myrtle. By the time England move on to their next venue, some supporters will remember bowlers’ spells—but even more will be able to give you a detailed review of Canberra’s best flat white.
From Scoreboard To Storyboard At Canberra’s Museums
Ashes coverage right now is full of the usual debates: should England play more warm-ups, are they undercooked, will “sticking to their guns” in Canberra pay off in Brisbane or Adelaide? But walk just a short ride from Manuka Oval and suddenly the stakes shift—you’re in museums that deal not in runs and series, but in decades and centuries. Many fans, with only a couple of days in town, pick one: the Australian War Memorial, the National Gallery of Australia, or Questacon if they’re traveling with kids.
One England family shared on Reddit how a rain-affected afternoon—frustrating for cricket—became their most memorable travel moment. With play delayed, they took a taxi to the War Memorial, expecting a quick look around. Three hours later they were still standing quietly in front of the Roll of Honour, listening to the daily Last Post ceremony. Another group of fans swapped tales in the bar that night, not about who should bat at three, but about the haunting Afghanistan exhibits and the view back over the city from the Memorial’s steps.
That’s the strange gift of a tour game in a political capital: it pulls you from the bubble of sport and nudges you toward the bigger narratives a country tells about itself. In England right now, columnists are comparing this Ashes build-up to tours gone by. In Canberra, you’re invited to set that sporting nostalgia alongside a much longer history, all within a 15-minute drive. Travelers following the team learn fast: schedule at least one half-day away from the scorecard to walk through a museum. It might change what you talk about over your post-match drink.
Discovering The “Boring” Capital That Isn’t Boring At All
When news broke that England would play their key Ashes warm-up in Canberra—and then “stick to their guns” amid questions—plenty of fans rolled their eyes. Why not Sydney? Why not more time in Brisbane? Why a city that, in the British imagination, barely exists beyond being “not Sydney” or “not Melbourne”? Then flights were booked, hotels reserved, and a quiet transformation began. Travel stories started seeping out on TikTok and Instagram: clips of kangaroos grazing on suburban ovals at dusk, timelapses of the sunset from Mount Ainslie, goofy videos of England fans trying (and mostly failing) to pronounce “Ngunnawal,” the name of the First Nations people whose land Canberra sits on.
By the time the first ball of the tour game was bowled, a pattern had emerged. The same supporters who’d grumbled about “wasting” a few days in Canberra were already planning a return, some even talking about adding the city to future non-cricket trips. What changed? Not the skyline, which remains modest, or the reputation, which is still catching up with reality. What changed was proximity. When a headline drags you somewhere you’d never choose yourself—this week, it’s a warm-up match and a former captain backing the decision—it can crack open a place you’d written off without knowing.
For travelers, there’s a simple lesson hiding in this Ashes sideshow: don’t ignore the “Canberras” of your own journeys. The filler stops, the warm-up cities, the locations chosen by logistics rather than bucket-list status—these are often where the real stories hide.
Conclusion
This week, as Alec Stewart defends England’s decision to stick with their Canberra warm-up and analysts argue about whether one modest tour game is enough preparation for the Ashes, another narrative is playing out in the background. It’s in the early-morning training sessions under a watercolor sky, the shared bike rides around Lake Burley Griffin, the spontaneous food pilgrimages between overs, the museum visits sparked by a rain delay, and the growing chorus of voices saying, “I didn’t expect to love this place, but I do.”
Travel doesn’t always announce itself with big-ticket names and glossy brochures. Sometimes it slips in quietly, under a sports headline, and turns a “tactical” decision into a ticket for hundreds of fans to discover somewhere new. If a cricket warm-up match can sell Canberra to the world without even trying, imagine what other “boring” stops on your next itinerary might be waiting to surprise you.